In order to activate, deactivate, or just re-order different course navigation links in Canvas, please follow the instructions below:
You can also enable the link by dragging the item to the top list of links (the one that starts with Home) and dropping it.
You can also deactivate the link by dragging the item to the bottom list of links (the one that doesn't start with Home) and dropping it.
Drag and drop the links into the order that you want them to be in the top menu. Keep in mind that Home always has to be on top and Settings will always be on bottom (although it does not appear in the list).
Grades/Outcomes
Student Success (this is a link to the Student Resources page created by the CTL)
Syllabus (this gives the students a view of the timeline of the course)
This just hides the view from the students that would allow them to go searching through your content. You can still access and use the following without the link being enabled for students.
Development courses are pretty simple, but powerful. They are sandbox courses that instructors can use to create course-specific content outside of any ties/limitations based on terms or students. They essentially serve as templates or lesson plans for the course and can be imported into the current term and endlessly into the future.
As opposed to copying a completed course at the end of the term. Development courses give the instructor the freedom to:
Beyond requesting a development course to begin planning for their new position, new instructors have an extra reason to use development courses. Due to privacy concerns, Canvas restricts adding new users to completed courses and so departments will often use development courses to share previous versions of the content with instructors that are new to the University or teach new subjects. Please see our Course Duplication Policy for more information on this.
If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of development courses or in having a development course created for your teaching assignment, please contact the Canvas Admin.
Previously-taught courses are usually courses taught by the same instructor either in previous terms (or can be from the same term if the instructor teaches multiple versions of that course (NOTE: There is also another workaround that can help with this, for more information on that, see this article on cross-listing (coming soon)). An example of a previously-taught course might be: ENG-101 was taught in the Fall of 2022 by Mary Westmacott and, after an unexplained absence in the Spring of that year, she wants to copy that content into her ENG-101 course in Fall 2023.
The process for both of these situations is the same.
Please view this video here to go through those steps.
Cross-listing is when you put two sections of students into a single Canvas course. Sections are what normally define the roster of students for any given class. If you teach the same content to multiple sections (for example HUM-101-MM01, HUM-101-MM02, HUM-101-MM03) then you might want to cross-list those sections into one Canvas course that hosts all of the sections.
Instead of copying content and pages for multiple courses, you only have to upload the content once.
Students remain in their Colleague/MU-HUB assigned sections. If you need to send out messages to only one section, you can still do that in the Inbox and/or Announcements fields.
You retain control over timelines of when each group can see announcements, assignments, and discussions, while also getting to control the deadlines for when items are due for each section. For example, if your MM01 has an assignment due on Monday and the MM02 has the same assignment due on Tuesday, you can set that up in the assignment settings.
It must be done as early as possible in the term. Grades from non-cross-listed courses can be moved with the students but submissions cannot.
While dated material (assignments, discussions, etc.) can be given different timetables for each section. Content (pages and modules) is shown to all students at the same time. For help in restricting these, contact the CTL to ask about setting up modules with prerequisites.
The process for cross-listing is fairly easy but, remember it should be done early in the year if possible. Ideally, it should be done before the first assignments are submitted or any grades distributed.
First, choose which course will "host" the other sections. If you already have content in one of the courses, choose that one. If you do not, the choice does not really matter. The only thing to consider is that whatever course you choose will be the one that shows on all of the students' dashboards (regardless of what section they are assigned).
Second, follow the instructions in the video below to cross-list your courses.
If you have any questions reach out to Blake Ide.
While adding the announcement, you will notice that the "Post to" field is set for "All Sections". If you want to target just a single section click the X on the All Sections selection and then you can search the sections in your course to target either by typing the name of the section or clicking the down arrow on the right side of the box.
While adding the assignment (or editing it), look at the Assign box at the bottom of the page. By default a new assignment is assigned to "Everyone" but you can change this to match a single section in the same way that you can change it to match a single student. Click into the Assign To box and you should see your section appear at the top of the list. Select the section that you want to target and then fill out the Due, Available from, and Until sections with the timeline associated with that section.
If you want another section to have that same assignment but want any of that timeline to be different, click the + Add button at the bottom of the box and select another section to associate with the custom timeline.
Discussions are a little more complicated in cross-listed courses. By default, discussions take place at the course level, and including "Everyone" as we did in assignments will put all sections into the same discussion board (even if they have different timelines).
However, if you do not want all of the sections to participate in one discussion board, then you have two options.
Create a discussion specific to individual sections. This means that if you wanted to have a discussion regarding Classical Literature in your course you would create three separate discussions: Classical Literature MM01, Classical Literature MM02, and Classical Literature MM03.
The other option is to go to your People page and create a group for each section in your course (MM01, MM02, MM03) and then create one Classical Literature discussion and check that it is a group assignment.
The drawback of number 1 is that you are creating multiple assignments that will clog up your grade book. By identifying the different sections (as we mentioned in Assignments), the students will not be penalized for not participating in a discussion for a different section (they won't even see the other sections on their grades), but it will still show up in the Instructor's view of the grade book.
The drawbacks of number 2 are that it takes a little longer to set up the first time but it only has to be set up once for the entire semester.
For more detailed descriptions of these options, see the document here. If you have any questions reach out to Blake Ide.